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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™
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Articles 1 - 13 of 13
Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Economics Of The Super Bowl, Victor Matheson
Economics Of The Super Bowl, Victor Matheson
Economics Department Working Papers
The Super Bowl is America’s premier sporting event. This paper details basic economic facts about the game as examines the controversy surrounding the purported economic impact of the game on host communities. While the league and sports boosters claim that the game brings up to a $500 million economic impact to host cities, a review of the literature suggests that the true economic impact is a fraction of this amount.
Sports Franchises, Stadiums, And City Livability: An Examination Of Professional Sports And Crime Rates, Robert Baumann, Bryan Engelhardt, Victor Matheson, Taylor Ciavarra
Sports Franchises, Stadiums, And City Livability: An Examination Of Professional Sports And Crime Rates, Robert Baumann, Bryan Engelhardt, Victor Matheson, Taylor Ciavarra
Economics Department Working Papers
We estimate the impact sporting events have on local crime rates using the technique developed in Arellano and Bond (2001). For events, we consider the presence of MLB, NBA, NFL, and NHL franchises as well as whether a city held one of the respective championships, the Olympics, or World Cup matches. We find little to no evidence that sporting events are correlated with either property or violent crime.
Anomalies In Tournament Design: The Madness Of March Madness, Robert Baumann, Victor Matheson, Cara Howe
Anomalies In Tournament Design: The Madness Of March Madness, Robert Baumann, Victor Matheson, Cara Howe
Economics Department Working Papers
Tournament design is of crucial importance in competitive sports. The primary goal of effective tournament design is to provide incentives for the participants to maximize their performance both during the tournament and in the time period leading up to the tournament. In spectator sports, a secondary goal of tournament design is to also promote interesting match ups that generate fan interest. Seeded tournaments, in general, promote both goals. Teams or individuals with strong performances leading up to a tournament receive higher seeds which increase their chances of progressing further in the tournament. Furthermore, seeding ensures that the strongest teams or …
Fiscal Policy Cyclicality And Growth Within The U.S. States, Ayako Kondo, Justin Svec
Fiscal Policy Cyclicality And Growth Within The U.S. States, Ayako Kondo, Justin Svec
Economics Department Working Papers
We exploit differences in the stringency of balanced budget rules across US states to estimate the effect of fiscal policy cyclicality on state GDP growth. While most states have passed laws restricting deficits, the nature and strictness of these laws vary greatly. States with more stringent balanced budget restrictions run more procyclical fiscal policy. We use the diversity in these laws as an instrument for the cyclicality of state government spending. We find modest evidence that more counter-cyclical public expenditure increases a state's average growth rate per capita. Further, our point estimates suggest that a state could increase its annual …
Efficient Labor Force Participation With Search And Bargaining, Bryan Engelhardt, David L. Fuller
Efficient Labor Force Participation With Search And Bargaining, Bryan Engelhardt, David L. Fuller
Economics Department Working Papers
A fixed wage is inefficient in a standard search model when workers endogenously separate from employment. We derive an efficient employment contract that involves agents paying a hiring fee (or bond) upon the formation of a match. We estimate the fixed wage and efficient contract assuming the hiring fee is unobservable, and find evidence to reject the efficient contract in favor of the fixed wage rule. A counterfactual experiment reveals the current level of labor force participation to be 9% below the efficient level, and a structural shift to the efficient contract improves welfare by nearly 4%.
Luck Or Skill? An Examination Of The Ehrlich - Simon Bet, Katherine A. Kiel, Victor Matheson, Kevin Golembiewski
Luck Or Skill? An Examination Of The Ehrlich - Simon Bet, Katherine A. Kiel, Victor Matheson, Kevin Golembiewski
Economics Department Working Papers
In 1980, Paul Ehrlich and Julian Simon placed a famous bet on whether the prices of a bundle of natural resources would rise or fall over the ensuing decade. Simon won the bet as the real price of the bundle fell significantly, and the result of this bet has been taken as proof that technological progress is likely overcome any Neo-Malthusian concerns about natural resource scarcity. Contrary to the popular perception, however, an examination of the price history of the identical bundle of goods from 1900-2007 shows that Ehrlich and not Simon would have won a majority of the bets …
The Great Macroeconomic Experiment: Assessing The Effects Of Fiscal Stimulus Spending On Employment Growth, Robert Baumann, Bryan Engelhardt, Victor Matheson
The Great Macroeconomic Experiment: Assessing The Effects Of Fiscal Stimulus Spending On Employment Growth, Robert Baumann, Bryan Engelhardt, Victor Matheson
Economics Department Working Papers
As the economics profession is split over the expected impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, we analyze the effects as if it were an experiment. Specifically, we analyze the effects of spending on employment using a difference-in-difference approach by state. To date, we find spending has had no significant effect on employment.
The Non-Linear Effect Of Wealth On Crime, Chihiro Muroi, Robert Baumann
The Non-Linear Effect Of Wealth On Crime, Chihiro Muroi, Robert Baumann
Economics Department Working Papers
Although theory suggests the relationship between crime and wealth is ambiguous, most empirical analyses estimate a monotonic relationship and find that wealth has negative effect on crime. Using two proxies for wealth (median income and poverty rate) and two types of crime (property and violent), we find a quadratic relationship is the best fit for our four crime-wealth groups. In general, the expected negative effect of wealth on crime only applies to wealthier counties. In poorer counties, wealth has an unexpected positive effect on crime. This result may be theoretically consistent, or an unintended byproduct of the Uniform Crime Reports …
Sorting And Statistical Discrimination In Schools: An Analysis Using The National Longitudinal Study Of Adolescent Health, Anil Nathan
Economics Department Working Papers
The rigorous economic analysis of peer group formation is a burgeoning subject. Much has been written about how peers in uence an individual's behavior, and these effects are quite prevalent. However, less has been written on how exactly these peer groups begin and the resulting consequences of their formation. A reason for the dearth of knowledge on peer group formation is the lack of quality data sets that clearly define one's peers. To resolve this issue, this paper explores data which allows a peer group to be defined openly through self nominations. Using these nominations as well as characteristics of …
Drawing Conclusions From Non-Random Samples: A Comment On “Race And Art: Prices For African American Painters, Melissa Boyle, Victor Matheson
Drawing Conclusions From Non-Random Samples: A Comment On “Race And Art: Prices For African American Painters, Melissa Boyle, Victor Matheson
Economics Department Working Papers
In a recent paper in the Journal of Black Studies, “Race and Art: Prices for African American Painters and Their Contemporaries,” economist Richard Agnello examines price differentials between paintings sold at auction from 1972 to 2004 for a set of 16 African American artists, and a group of white artists identified as similar contemporaries. In this short paper we examine Agnello’s control group of white artists and confirm that this is a non-randomly selected sample of artists that are, on average, quantifiably more famous than the black artists in Agnello’s treatment group. In light of this selection bias, we discuss …
Spreading The Fortune: The Distribution Of Lottery Prizes Across Countries, Victor Matheson, Kent Grote
Spreading The Fortune: The Distribution Of Lottery Prizes Across Countries, Victor Matheson, Kent Grote
Economics Department Working Papers
It has been 15 years since Cook and Clotfelter described the scale economies associated with state-run lotto games in an American Economic Review article entitled “The Peculiar Scale Economies of Lotto.” U.S. states with larger populations are identified as having the ability to offer games with larger jackpots to attract higher sales per capita. The current paper extends this analysis to all current U.S. state and multi-state lotto-style lottery games as well as to a sample of international lotto games for comparative purposes. The development of the two major U.S. multi-state games over time is also examined to illustrate that …
Health And Utilization Effects Of Increased Access To Publicly Provided Health Care: Evidence From The U.S. Department Of Veterans Affairs, Melissa Boyle
Economics Department Working Papers
During the mid-1990s, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs overhauled its health care system in an attempt to increase quality and efficiency. The restructuring involved the adoption of a capitated payment system and treatment methods based on the managed care model. This reorganization was accompanied by a major expansion in the population eligible to receive VA care. Using the National Health Interview Survey and VA medical claims data, this study analyzes both the efficiency of providing public health care in a managed care setting and the effectiveness of expanding coverage to healthier and wealthier populations. I estimate that between 35 …
Hail To The Chief: Assessing The Economic Impact Of Presidential Inaugurations On The Washington, D.C. Local Economy, Robert Baumann, Bryan Engelhardt, Victor Matheson
Hail To The Chief: Assessing The Economic Impact Of Presidential Inaugurations On The Washington, D.C. Local Economy, Robert Baumann, Bryan Engelhardt, Victor Matheson
Economics Department Working Papers
While presidential inaugurations routinely attract hundreds of thousands or more visitors to Washington, D.C. for the quadrennial celebration, our examination of employment from the Current Employment Statistics survey from 1939 to the present and both employment and unemployment from the Current Population Survey from 1977 to the present finds no noticeable effect on either variable from the event. The residents of D.C. should not expect the inauguration to make them any richer, and the city should not count on any economic benefits generated by the event to fully pay for the significant costs of hosting it.